


The Girl, The Doctor, and The Stars

by flibbertygigget



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Super Mario Galaxy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Astronomy, Catharsis, Episode: s10e12 The Doctor Falls, Fairy Tale Elements, Gen, Light Angst, Regeneration (Doctor Who)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 19:55:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29672445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flibbertygigget/pseuds/flibbertygigget
Summary: A very, very long time ago there was a girl who was taught how to let go of the stars. Lightyears later, she returned the favor.
Relationships: Twelfth Doctor & Princess Rosalina
Comments: 4
Kudos: 3





	The Girl, The Doctor, and The Stars

_The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff._   
_\- Carl Sagan, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage_

A very, very long time ago there was a young girl. One day, this girl spotted a rusted spaceship holding a small star child.

"What's your name? Are you lost?" the girl asked the star child. 

"I'm Luma, and I'm waiting for Mama. She's coming for me on a comet!" said the star child, who had been waiting day and night. 

"Don't worry. I'll wait with you," the little girl promised Luma. 

At nightfall, the little girl borrowed her father's telescope and peered into the sky. She looked and looked, but she saw nothing. Hours turned into days and then years, but still the sky revealed nothing. The girl was about to give up, but then a blue box appeared next to the Luma's crashed spaceship.

"Is that Mama?" Luma said. The door of the box opened and a man stepped out. He had an impressive set of eyebrows that seemed to scowl a challenge at the universe.

"Hello," the man said. "I'm the Doctor. I got your distress signal."

"Luma and I are waiting for Luma's Mama," the little girl said. "Can you help us?" The Doctor scowled, but it wasn't an unkind scowl.

"Of course I can help you," he said. "Come into my TARDIS." And that was how the search for the celestial mother began.

After packing a few essentials - a telescope, a butterfly net, a stuffed bear, bread, and jam - the girl and Luma followed the Doctor into his TARDIS. The girl's eyes went wide as she stared around.

"It's so big inside!" she said.

"Infinitely big," the Doctor agreed, "just as big as the universe." He pulled a lever, and the entire ship began to groan and shift. When the Doctor opened the door, the girl could see that they were no longer on her own planet. Instead, the planet they stepped out onto was made entirely of ice that shone like crystal. 

"Is this where Mama is?" Luma asked.

"I don't know," said the Doctor. "I asked the TARDIS to take us to other beings with similar DNA. I'm hoping that one of them will be your mama." The girl, the Doctor, and Luma searched the small planet all day, but it wasn't until the sun had set that they saw a small glow coming from one of the crystalline ice caves.

"Wait here," the Doctor said. He went into the cave, and when he came out he was carrying another star child.

"I found him in the ice cave," he said with a frown.

"Hi," said the star child. "I'm Hikari, and I'm waiting for Mama."

"I'm Luma, and I'm looking for Mama too," said Luma. "Come with us, and we can find her together!" The Doctor pinched the bridge of his nose, but he didn't argue. The girl offered him half her jam sandwich.

The Doctor took the girl and the star children to many other planets. They went to one where all the water was bright purple and another where there was nothing but golden glass as far as the eye could see. They went to one where all the animals had no fur at all and another that was made up entirely of shrubs. They went to many planets across the whole universe and collected many star children, but none of the planets held the celestial mother.

One night, the girl dreamed about her own mother. In the dream, she was back on the hill where Luma's spaceship had crashed. "Where are you going?" she asked her mother's retreating back. 

Without turning, her mother replied, "Don't fret, dearest. I'm not going anywhere. I'm always watching over you, like the sun in the day and the moon in the night."

A wave of sadness washed over the girl. "What about when it rains, and I can't see the sun or the moon?" Her mother thought for a moment before responding.

"I will turn into a star in the clouds and wait for your tears to dry." 

When the girl woke up, her face was wet with tears. She went to the kitchen of the TARDIS for a cup of hot cocoa, but the Doctor was already there with his guitar. He was playing a soft, sad sort of song. When the Doctor noticed her standing there, he stopped.

"What are you doing up?" he said. That's when he noticed her tears. "Why are you crying? Are you hurt?"

"No," the little girl said, shaking her head. "I'm crying because I'll never see my mother again!" 

"Do you want me to take you and Luma back to your planet?" the Doctor said.

"My mother isn't there anymore," said the girl. "She died a long time ago."

"That's a good reason to cry," the Doctor said. The girl looked at him skeptically. "It is! Everything ends, people and stars, and that's always sad. But if you keep that sadness inside you, it can hurt your hearts. Tears are your body's way of getting the sadness out."

"I've missed her and cried about it an awful lot," the little girl said. "I don't think I'll ever forget about her."

"Of course you won't forget about her," the Doctor said. "But, you know, the memory of her won't always be a sad one. One day, when all your tears have been wept, you'll be able to look back, remember her, and be happy."

"Is that how you feel about your family?" the little girl asked. The Doctor looked down at his guitar and began strumming again.

"We're all stories in the end, not all of them happy ones," he said at last. "There are some of my friends for whom all my tears have been shed. There are others I'm still working on remembering with happiness, and others I wish I could remember at all."

"Is that why you're playing your guitar?" said the little girl. "To remember them?"

"Yes," the Doctor said. "Yes, I believe so."

The more planets they visited and star children they found, the more the little girl had to do to help them. She fed them Star Bits that she caught from the TARDIS door and made sure they didn't wander too far when they landed on planets. She gave them hugs and made sure that they knew they were loved, even without their Mama. But eventually the girl and the Doctor found so many star children that even the TARDIS's infinite space was starting to feel a bit crowded.

"I think we ought to find a home," the little girl, who had by now grown into quite a big girl, said. "Somewhere with enough space for a house and a garden, but that can also fly about and find more star children and Star Bits."

"The TARDIS can take you anywhere and anywhen," the Doctor said. "Just think about the place you want to go, and she'll listen to you."

"Really?" the girl said skeptically, since she had seen just how poorly the TARDIS sometimes took instruction.

"Really," the Doctor said. "She knows that this is important to get right, unlike some of my whims."

"Alright," said the girl. The Doctor opened up the TARDIS's telepathic circuits and told her to touch them and think about the perfect home for her and the star children.

"I want some place they can grow up," the girl said. "Someplace safe and big, with plenty of Star Bits." She opened her eyes when she felt the TARDIS stop flying with a bump, but the Doctor was frowning at one of the screens.

"Why have you brought us here, old girl?" he muttered.

"Should we look at what's outside?" the girl said.

"There's nothing outside. We're in space," the Doctor said.

"Still, the TARDIS wouldn't let us get sucked out," the girl said. "She must want to show us something."

"Yes," the Doctor said. "That's what I'm afraid of." Still, he opened the door, and the girl stuck her head out of it. Just like the Doctor had said, they were deep in space, over a lightyear from the nearest star. The Doctor started tapping his fingers against the palm of his hand, counting something.

"Why did the TARDIS bring us here?" the girl asked.

"Wait for a minute," the Doctor said. "I think I know what you're here to learn." The girl and the Doctor watched the universe, and after a while the girl wondered if the TARDIS had steered them wrong.

And that's when it happened.

The star collapsed in on itself, turning from a golden ball to a hard, cold dot in the distance. In less than a second it had disappeared, or at least it seemed to. Then the space in front of her seemed to explode in a web of gas and starlight. The little girl gasped, taking in the new things being made and unmade around her. In spite of the shockwave that was churning up the cosmos, the TARDIS continued to bob peacefully in the sea of space.

"That's enough of that, I think," the Doctor said. "You have a home to find, and I think that the TARDIS will take you there this time." The girl reluctantly tore her gaze away, and the Doctor closed the TARDIS door behind her.

"Why did we go there instead of where I told her to go?" the girl asked.

"You don't tell the TARDIS, you reason with her. And she always, _always_ has a reason for taking you off-course."

"So," said the girl, "what's the reason?" The Doctor fiddled with one of the levers on the TARDIS console that the girl suspected didn't do anything at all.

"The TARDIS wanted you to see death, the death of a star." The girl's breath froze in her lungs.

"I didn't think that stars could die."

"Everything dies. It is the way of the universe. We are nothing but the thread strung between two fixed points, the moment we are born and the moment we die. You can run from it, fight it, but in the end there is one constant, one great leveler. Death. In time, even the stars burn out." The Doctor knelt, looking her in the eye. "So what makes us maintain the thread between? What keeps us alive when the universe inevitably wants us dead? What makes us care for pets and gardens and people when they'll only leave us in the end?"

"I don't know," the girl said, her voice trembling.

"I'll tell you why," the Doctor said, "or why I do, at least. A very, very long time ago, I was there when the universe was born. One moment there was nothing, and then - something! Light! Heat! Neutrons, protons, electrons! Anti-electrons, photons, and neutrinos! All these components, this raw matter, but do you know what there wasn't?" The girl shook her head. "There were no stars, not even star children. It wasn't until later, when the protons and neutrons had banded together, when matter had cooled and condensed, that stars could even think of forming. It wasn't until hundreds of thousands of stars had lived and died that the matter they created was anywhere near what was needed to create you."

"I'm - I'm made of dead stars?" the girl said.

"The nitrogen in your DNA, the carbon in your bones, the oxygen in your lungs - all of that was born in the core of a collapsing star and flung to you in the explosion of a supernova. We are all made of the essence of stars." The Doctor's smile was very sad and very kind. "Everything dies, but nothing ends, not really. Your star children will learn and grow and eventually turn to stardust and scatter across the cosmos - but not forever. They reform, they create new matter that births new creatures like you and I. The universe endlessly regenerates, and so we must regenerate with it. Your choices, your actions, reverberate across the fabric of time just like stardust."

"So you're saying that it's okay," the girl said. "It's okay that we can't keep everything safe and - and just as it is. Just as we'd like it to be."

"Yes," said the Doctor. "It's alright. It's not an easy thing you're deciding to do, Rosalina, living and caring, but it's so much better than the alternative." The girl glanced over at the TARDIS console, which was slowly whirring to life.

"Yes," the girl said, "I think it really is. TARDIS, would you take me and the star children to our new home, please?" 

* * *

_"Pity, no stars. I hoped there'd be stars."_

* * *

Rosalina was no longer the little girl who had found Luma in that crash-landed spaceship. She wasn't even the big girl who had listened to the Doctor explain the galaxy and refused to turn away. Rosalina had lived through more love and loss than most of the universe combined, had watched generations of star children go out from under her wing into the inevitability of the universe. She had watched her children die in brilliant bursts of light; she had gathered up the new little ones that formed from their starstuff.

That was why, when the Doctor whispered his last regrets to the unseen stars, the stars heard him and reported back to her.

Rosalina's comet was far away, but she had lived long enough to know that time was relative. A pull here, a tug there, and she was floating on the outskirts of a black hole, watching a doomed ship float on the edge of spaghettification. Rosalina sung out, and the TARDIS sung back.

Another small pull on the fabric of the universe, and Rosalina was back in the place that had held her and her children until she had been old and wise enough to hold them on her own. She went over to the center console, determined to get the TARDIS out of the black hole's gravity well before fighting it became impossible. While being sucked into a black hole wouldn't kill the TARDIS, it would be rather uncomfortable for her and any passengers.

It wasn't until she had safely guided the TARDIS to a portion of space where many of her grown star children lived that Rosalina turned her attention to the Doctor.

The Doctor was lying on the floor, battered and unmoving. He was breathing, his hearts still beating, but Rosalina knew that he would not be able to continue, not in this form. Part of her mourned, as she always did when a star was nearing its time to burn out. That didn't mean that she didn't understand what he had called her here to do.

"Doctor," she whispered, kneeling next to him so she could say her words directly in his ear. "Doctor, come back." His breath hitched, spine arching as though to force more beats from his hearts. "Doctor, I brought you the stars."

"Stars!" he gasped out. His eyes snapped open, flicking desperately from one side of the TARDIS to the other. "I hoped there would be stars!"

"Yes," said Rosalina. "My children heard you."

"They couldn't - a ship-" His eyes finally met hers, and the smile that broke across his face was as genuine as it was painful. "Rosalina."

"My children heard you," she said, cradling his head in her lap, "and so I came."

"I'm glad," the Doctor said. Yellow starlight was beginning to seep from his hands. Rosalina took one of his hands and began to stroke it, encouraging the starlight to come through, but the Doctor stared at it with something like horror. "I don't - I was dying. I was ending. I can't-"

"You will weave yourself into the fabric of the universe," Rosalina said.

"I can't do this again!" the Doctor choked out. "I can't! I can't keep changing and becoming someone else, not like this!"

"You can," said Rosalina. "You can and you will. Let go, Doctor. You can let go."

"I was - I was ready to die," he said. "You pulled me back, you - you - I wish you hadn't. I wish you could have let me die."

"I would never do that, Doctor," she said. "Everything dies, yes, but everything lives as well. Your thread has not ended, not yet."

"I don't want to change," he whispered, almost whimpered. "It took me so long to get to this point."

"Change is inevitable, Doctor. You taught me that. Every choice and action reverberates across the cosmos and takes its place within the web. Choosing not to change is still a choice, and every choice is, in a sense, a change. The only question is what kind of change you will choose." Tears were carving clear paths over the Doctor's soot-stained face, but his body was leaking more starlight than ever.

"I was so tired," he said. "I'd made my peace with it. One last stand, go out on a high note."

"In a sense, you did. You'll just have a chance to go out another way. The cycle repeats, though never the exact same way. You'll see." Rosalina mentally nudged the TARDIS, and her walls became completely transparent. "Look, Doctor. Your stars are right here." He opened his eyes and gasped.

"These eyes - I'm so glad I got to see them with these eyes."

"You are made of stardust, Doctor. Maybe your next body will hold some of what your children made."

"My..."

"You raised the first generation as much as I did." Rosalina could tell that his time was coming to an end. He was glowing as brightly as any of her children. "Doctor, it's time."

"I - I think I'm ready now," he said. "Rosalina..." The Doctor's eyes locked with hers for the last time. "Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind."

"Regenerate like the universe," Rosalina said. "Doctor, let go." And with the brilliant starburst of a supernova, the Doctor did.

**Author's Note:**

> I've referenced or stolen bits from quite a few things for this. Large chunks of the beginning are quoted from Rosalina's storybook in Super Mario Galaxy. There are quite a few bits that either come from or are inspired by Matthew Stover's novelization of "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith", Carl Sagan's miniseries "Cosmos", "Tomb of the Cybermen", and Linkin Park's song "Iridescent."


End file.
